Keeping Those Jerseys Unwashed For The Big Win

49ers fan Kristofer Noceda (third from left) with friends at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.

Kristofer Noceda

Sports fans and athletes alike are notorious for superstitions. Take Michael Jordan, who would famously wear his North Carolina shorts under his Bulls uniform.

On Super Bowl Sunday, fans on both sides of the country are engaging in some odd behavior: donning unwashed jerseys, sporting fresh facial hair and sitting in that oh-so-special spot.

While the routines may seem silly, superstitions may actually have helped us evolve as a species.

Michael Neapolitan, 58, of Towson, Md., is spending Super Bowl Sunday the same way he has spent game days for the past few years. It involves football cards from the Ravens' opposing team, a hot grill and a group of like-minded friends.

"I will hold up one card, and announce the player's name, and they'll all chant back to me, 'Burn!' And I'll rip it up and throw it on the coals," Neapolitan explains. "Its fierce."

This ferocity began as a way to boost team spirit. But then, it turned into something more.

"After we had our long home win streak, I thought, maybe I've got something here," he says.

Now Neapolitan wouldn't dream of losing that something. Just like he wouldn't dream of washing his lucky Ravens apparel, down to the undergarments, that he's worn unwashed on game days for months now.

"This way, you start off in a very comfortable place," he says. "Knowing that you're doing everything you can possibly do, in the spirit world, if you will, to help your team win: the mojo."

On the West Coast, 30-year-old Kristofer Noceda of Livermore, Calif., is putting out his own mojo for the San Francisco 49ers.

He's wearing his unwashed team gear and painting his face with what he calls war paint.

"It's funny, because it's like, who is this guy, is he like an extra for Braveheart?" Noceda says with a laugh. "It's one of those things where I don't care if I look weird, or if I smell funny. It's kind of like that's the smell of victory."

Noceda has to sit in the same seat at the same restaurant, eating the same dish, what he calls the "magic chips," that he believes help spur his team to victory.

Believing in magic, being superstitious, counterintuitively, has actually helped us evolve as a species, says Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine.

He explains it this way: Millions of years ago, if you heard a rustle in the grass, do you think it's a predator or the wind?

"If you think the rustle in the grass is a dangerous predator, and it turns out it was just the wind, that's a superstition. But there's no harm in that, you just become more vigilant." says Shermer. "But if you think the rustle in the grass is just the wind, and it turns out it's a dangerous predator, you're lunch. You fail to see a connection that was real. And that's very costly."

And, he adds, those of us who think we are too rational for superstitions should think again: We are all superstitious to some degree.

"It's built into our brains. It's called learning," he says. "You think A is connected to B. And sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't."

When it comes to sports, we are especially susceptible to superstitions.

Both Noceda and Neapolitan say that if their team wins, they'll take some of the credit. And if they lose? Well, they say the magic has just run its course, and at least they can get those jerseys clean.